


PANACEA

by living_to_read



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: ACD verse, Canon, First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-01-01
Updated: 2011-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-14 07:10:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/146724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/living_to_read/pseuds/living_to_read
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After his return Holmes promises Watson to give up drugs, but he needs something else to keep his mind busy</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. PANACEA

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After his return Holmes promises Watson to give up drugs, but he needs something else to save his mind from stagnation

Holmes

It was one of those boring times between cases and I was feeling restless.

I would have more than willingly resorted to my seven percent solution, but one of the conditions, the only one to be precise, that my friend Watson had imposed on me before he agreed to return to our digs in Baker Street was that I stop using those alkaloids. Even though I disliked the idea to the core I reluctantly accepted it.

Things were already a bit strained between Watson and I after I let him believe me dead for three long years. Being the kind soul he is, Watson had already forgiven me, but I wasn't going to push my luck any further with him. If there was a limit to the number of times a friend could be hurt before loosing him for good, I wasn’t going to try and discover where Watson’s was. And then again, even if I wasn't ready to admit it yet, he was one the main reasons for my return from the land of death, so giving up cocaine to please him didn't seem such a big sacrifice when he asked.  
Needless to say that the first days without cocaine and morphine proved me brutally wrong on that point. It was so painful that I felt very close to loose my sanity, and I hated Watson with a passion rivalling my hatred for the late professor Moriarty.

Watson being Watson, he stayed at my side through the whole ordeal, no matter how badly I treated him. And at my side was where I found him when I woke up that morning, as weak as a new born kitten but finally feeling a bit better.

Watson was sleeping in a chair near my bed, in what looked like a very uncomfortable position for his back and his old wounds. There was, nonetheless, a hint of a smile concealed beneath his trimmed moustaches. His tousled hair and unshaved chin made him look at the same time exhausted and impishly younger than the prim and proper doctor I was accustomed to seeing.  
While watching him sleep, I remember I asked myself what I had done to deserve such a good and caring friend. Then, just to keep my mind busy, I began to study him, taking in details I had never paid attention to before and trying to deduce things I had never seen, like the shape and colour of his scars.

It was while searching for revealing clues about the wound in his leg that my eyes took notice of the impressive and unmistakable bulge underneath the fly of his trousers. I locked my eyes on it, my heart beating faster for no apparent reason as I stared with, I’m not ashamed to admit, morbid fascination.

That's when all changed. The ennui left my mind to be replaced by something totally new and alien to me: arousal. Suddenly I started to fantasize about him. How it would be like to touch him all over and unveil his body slowly as I stripped him of his clothes. What he looked like without his trousers on. Not that that part wasn't easy to deduce anyway.

A part of me, one I usually ignored, started to react to those fantasies, surprising me more than I though possible. It felt strangely elating to know that I was going to match Watson’s display of maleness and that for the first time in ages I didn’t find it an annoying and unwanted distraction.  
Then I forced my eyes to move up from Watson’s groin and come back to his face, just to be greeted by his still sleepy eyes. We remained that way for what seemed to me an eternity, looking each other deep in the eyes. His face was imperturbable, as if he wasn't thinking about anything.  
In that moment I realised that I had been caught. My mouth went completely dry and I began to feel dizzy. Before I was able to stutter some sort of excuse or invent something to divert his attention from the embarrassing moment, Watson smiled and asked me if I felt like eating something. Then he stood up from the chair, groaned for the pain in his back, stretched his shoulder to loose some kinks and said he was going to call Mrs. Hudson and conjure a breakfast of sorts for us both.

He acted like the “good old Watson” who did not observe and rarely deduced, and that put my mind at ease, but that lasted just long enough for me to admit to myself that I still wanted to see what he looked like without his clothes on.


	2. PANACEA

Watson

After the loss of my dear Mary I felt I had no strength left in me to fight back the growing dissatisfaction toward life that had swallowed me. Without Mary, and without Holmes I felt like living was just a futile and meaningless exercise. I never blamed them for having left me behind, but that didn't keep me from feeling completely full of sadness and bitterness.

Then Holmes came back from the grave and the joy I felt seeing him in front of me, and the rage for having been so badly wronged by his selfish behaviour proved to me that without any doubt I was still alive and capable of feeling. That was the moment I started to heal from my malaise.

Of course I forgave Holmes - How could I have done otherwise? It didn't take long for him to convince me to move back to Baker Street. Truth be told I was ready to answer yes from the moment he suggested it, but I played hard to get just to see how much he wanted it. I admit that I did even a bit more than that. I asked him to stop using cocaine and morphine and the fact that he accepted proved to me that he cared about me more than he was willingly able to admit.

So I moved back to Baker Street and we both returned to the lives we were living before my marriage and his so called death. Adjusting to the new 'old' life revealed itself harder than we both thought, especially during the first days, with Holmes fighting his addiction and probably hating me with a passion for having forced him to face such an ordeal.

A couple of times, during those first days, we came very close to hurting each other, but he seemed determined to keep his promise. I felt needed and finally alive while taking care of him during his withdrawal from the drug.

That was when sex, or better the lack of it, came back into my life with a vengeance. Being a very active person in every sense I had always thoroughly enjoyed sex. Mary and I used to share a perfect understanding, but after she fell ill everything came to an abrupt stop.

I never thought about finding sexual relief with another woman because I felt I was cheating my wife and I would never hurt her deliberately and that, I discovered later, remained true even after her death.

Everything changed the morning I woke up slouched in a chair in Holmes’ room, and I found him staring at me, or more precisely at the blatant display of my arousal inside my trousers.  
The virility I erroneously thought gone for good with my dear Mary, had chosen that morning to prove it had been just dormant for a while and apparently it was more awake than I was.  
Still half asleep I foggily wondered what Holmes could be deducing from the clues I was offering, and then I noticed how the blanket that was covering my friend was slightly tented in the general area of his middle section and I reached the conclusion that there was nothing to be ashamed of. After all we were just two healthy men dealing with a natural condition particularly frequent in the morning.

I feigned total obliviousness and went to look for the breakfast, since Holmes needed it after the days spent fighting the drugs, but I found myself unable to ignore the incident. For some reason, I was a little disturbed; perhaps unconsciously I was having a presentiment of where all this was leading to.

During the rest of the day the image of Holmes staring at my privates kept returning to my mind and produced some unexpected stirs, especially when our eyes accidentally met. I noticed that Holmes made an effort to pretend he was not looking at me, but I could see that he shot me sideway glances. One or two times I caught him staring at me and I noticed that his eyes were directed to my waist, and I looked at myself to see if something was showing that had caused him some curiosity about my genitals.

Only then I had an insight. What was he looking at and why? What was so uncommon in my appearance to catch the attention of the great Sherlock Holmes? Why did I have this feeling that he was trying to undress me in his mind? I mulled over those questions for the rest of the day and even if I should have thought differently, I found all that attention flattering.


	3. Chapter 3

Holmes

 

From that first moment I found myself anxious to look at Watson again. I don't know what came over me, since nothing really special had happened and Watson wasn't in any way different from the day before. And I had barely acknowledged his presence the day before.

When I joined him in our living room, we both acted normally. We had our breakfast, I lit my first pipe of the morning and he lit a cigarette and began to drag on it absent-mindedly. I pretended that I wasn't seeing him, but once in a while I'd throw him a glance. A few times our eyes locked and we looked away.

Stealing glances at Watson became a sort of routine in the following days. I remember that more than once I even saw him smiling after he caught me and some times I caught him staring at me in return. It was a strange game that we were playing, but it seemed harmless and it helped me to forget the cocaine and the ennui when there was no case to occupy my mind.

We spent a couple of days helping inspector Lestrade to solve a gruesome but boringly plain murder, and during all that time I remained focused on the work and never saw in Watson anything more than my dear friend and colleague, but the moment the case was over I found my attention totally focused on him again. Since I’d given up the cocaine for him, it seemed appropriate that he provided the cure to save my mind from dying of stagnation.

On the first day of the second week of our game, I became bolder and climbed the stairs to Watson’s room. I had just had a sleepless night, just barely redeemed by a couple of pipes of good tobacco and a couple of hours of experiments with my chemicals. I was tired of the silence and decided I could have used Watson’s company, even if it was still horribly early. My idea was to wake him up with the excuse of an incoming case and then watch him rush through his morning’s routine. It surely was a useless prank, but I felt particularly bored that morning and the idea looked intriguing, perhaps even funny, although I wasn’t ready to admit that the drug free Sherlock Holmes liked to do things just for fun.

I found the door closed but not locked and I slipped in noiselessly. I squinted my eyes, trying to discern his figure in the pale morning light, and I almost fell backward when I realized he was lying on his bed with his eyes closed, his legs slightly spread , the blankets discarded on the floor and his night shirt rolled up far beyond the line of his hips.  
“I can’t believe I’m doing this…” I thought, but I made no efforts to leave and I stood very still, breathing a little hard while I looked at his displayed maleness in all its glory.

Watson’s member was impressive, even in his flaccid state. It was big and fat, and surrounded by a thick patch of tan hair. His testicles were huge and almost hung down to the bed between hiss legs.  
I was shaking in excitement as I stood there and looked at it, and I was worried about Watson waking up, but since that could be my only chance to look at it, I stepped closer.

As I stared at Watson's equipment with the same attention I would have paid to a trail of footprints near a murder scene, I noticed it was moving slightly. Each time Watson’s abdomen rose and fell with his soft snoring, his prick would wiggle just a little bit.

As I watched, Watson’s member began to grow bigger and longer. It started very slowly. In fact I could only tell it was happening because his gland that started showing more and more from the wrinkled prepuce.  
It twitched a little but stayed like that for what seemed like a long time.  
little by little, it got harder, slowly moving and twitching. The gland peeked ever further out, and then it wasn't lying on his hip anymore but bouncing in the air.  
It only took another minute before it started pointing up toward Watson’s abdomen .

Still sleeping, Watson reached up and tugged on his swollen appendage, pulling it down toward his testicles. This moved the wrinkled skin all the way down and unsheathed the arrow pointed gland completely.

I held my breath, not really believing that this was happening. I wondered if Watson knew of my presence and was teasing me, but at the moment he seemed too enraptured and caught in his own pleasure to notice anything else.

Watson began to caress his penis and fondle his scrotum . He kept touching his private parts, moving his hand up and down his hard shaft. I was hypnotized. I don't know for how long we remained that way: he playing with himself, unaware of the world around him, and I looking fixedly at him, not caring anymore what he would think of me if he opened his eyes. My mouth was dry, I tried to swallow, but there was nothing to swallow; I tried to divert my eyes, but it was much too erotic to simply turn my head and pretend that I hadn't seen it.

My first thought was to run away from there and never look back, and my rational being was doing just that, but my body and my mouth didn't agree with my being. Instinctively my hand began to caress my crotch, without removing my penis from the confines of my pants, and I licked my lips, looking straight at him. Just then he moaned and arched his back and begun to ejaculate vigorously.  
I took a last look at his face, wonderfully contorted by his pleasure and bolted for the door, feeling like a thief who had stolen someone else’s most precious treasure.

I ran downstairs, counting only on my slippers to keep me from making too much noise on the way down. I dived into my bed room, bolted the door, sat on my bed, and hugged my knees to my chin.  
My heart was pounding madly in my chest, my breath was reduced to short gasps, my nerves felt ablaze . It was the same sort of excitement I usually felt during an investigation, especially in that particular moment in which every single piece falls into place and the mystery is solved, but there was more, too. I used to get hard, sometimes, while pinning a murderer to his or her responsibilities, but never the way I was while the images of Watson pleasing himself; his imposing prick pulsing in his hand, alive, vibrating, and then spitting his own juices, kept running over and over in my mind.  
So that was what lust felt like, I thought. It was mind consuming, and thousand times more mesmerizing than cocaine.

I wanted to withdraw into my cocoon of pure logic and rationality and forbid my body to develop into this new creature so attracted by the burning desires of the flesh. At the same time I wanted to spread my wings, flutter them in the air and explore the whole immensity of that new world suddenly spread before me.  
I wanted to run as far away as possible from Baker Street and I wanted to climb back the stairs and beg Watson to take me in his bed and do whatever he wanted with me.  
Torn by this overflow of inputs I let myself slid to my back on the bed, spread my legs wide and unbuttoned my trousers, freeing my impossibly engorged appendage. I looked at it with amused curiosity, noticing with a certain amount of surprise that in this state it was about the same size of Watson’s, maybe just a bit more slender and with a rounder tip. Knowing I was his equal down there, at least while aroused, made me idiotically proud of myself.  
Until I was sixteen years old I could not totally uncover my gland without pain and that left a deep seated mortification on me during all my early years. I used to pull the prepuce up and down, as far as I could, constantly, to loosen it. By time I was able to do it I had already lost interest in the process and used to look at my prick with a sense of shame and inadequacy.  
I pulled back the prepuce from my gland, and I happily welcomed the total absence of pain and the wonderful feeling that spread from there to the tip of my toes and the roots of my hair.  
I began to stroke my shaft harder, faster, not caring, just wanting to feel. I groaned and writhed as my whole body became centred on that feeling and when I spent myself it was like an explosion of pure pleasure that left me breathless and drowsy and as sated as never before.  
I don’t remember if I managed to tuck myself back in my trousers before to fall peacefully asleep.


	4. PANACEA

Watson

 

In the following days things happened the same way. We eyed each other a lot as and I was sure that Holmes was really interested in seeing what I concealed underneath my clothes. The thought that hit me the first day, hinting that he might be interested in my genitals, was not just a thought anymore.

I was positive that Holmes wished to see my equipment. Was he an invert or was his interest just focused on me? I wondered how would be his life if he really was homosexual . I didn't think he had a vast experience in the subject, but did he have any experience at all of that nature?

With that in my mind I suddenly wondered what it would be like to have intercourse with a man. I had never had this kind of interest before, now it fascinated me. What would it be like to have my manhood buried deep into a man? Better yet, what would it be like to have it buried inside Holmes? Because the thought of touching another man in anything other than a professional manner was disgusting, but embracing Holmes was a totally different matter.

I feared I would be repulsed, for that wasn't the sort of sex I knew. Unlike Holmes, to me the fair sex had always been enchanting. My first experiences came early in my life, and I had embraced the pleasures of the flesh quite heartily, up to and certainly including with my beloved Mary. But they all were of the same kind, so why was I now suddenly thinking about how would it feel like to have sex with Holmes?

It occurred to me that it had been quite a while since I had scratched that particular itch. Not only since Mary’s death, but in fact her illness had forestalled any such pleasures between us for some months prior. Since her death, I had found myself unwilling to avail myself of the professional ‘ladies’ who could be found on the streets. It seemed dishonourable somehow.

But since this ‘game’ had sprung up with Holmes, I had begun once again to remember the delight of sharing such pleasure with another. So much more fulfilling than simple manipulation of my own flesh. I wanted to feel my hands on the body of another, feel it respond to my thrusts, feel the warmth of burying myself deep inside. If I could not bring myself to dishonour Mary’s memory with another woman, perhaps an actual encounter with Holmes would prove satisfactory in its’ stead? The thought seemed strange to me at first, but the more I mulled it over, the more I felt that I truly needed a new partner. And thinking of Holmes as that partner felt strangely right.

I wasn't sure if Holmes would accept me; perhaps he didn't want it at all and I was just reading the situation wrongly. And even if he agreed, I wasn't sure he would take me after he saw my size. My first night with Mary was a very difficult one. Our first experience wasn't very fulfilling for us, the poor dear being somewhat intimidated by the girth and length of my manhood. It took some time to overcome her fear and reach the perfect understanding we developed later.

Would Holmes take it? And if he did, what if I hurt him? For the moment I dismissed all those thoughts, knowing I would have to take one step at a time, starting with discovering if Holmes was really interested or not.

The answer came by itself some days later.

It was still early in the morning and I was in my room, savouring the remains of a dream that left me quite aroused. I can’t remember the gender of my dream partner, but the nature of the coupling was so powerful and manly that I doubt it involved someone of the fair sex.

My hands happened to have a desire of their own and I gave them free reign over my engorged sex.

That’s when I heard a suffocated gasp but I didn’t open my eyes to investigate. I simply decided to go on as if I heard nothing. It occurred to me that perhaps I was still dreaming but the thought that perhaps Holmes was there in my room, spying on me, made me feel even more aroused .   
Lazily I began to move my hand up and down my swollen member, and then my testes, without thinking of anything else but my pleasure. I kept doing it for quite a while feeling like the naughty schoolboy I once was. I changed pace, and rhythm time and time again until, with a low groan, I spent myself into my hand.  
I don’t remember how long I stayed like that, basking in the afterglow, but when I opened my eyes and looked around to find something to clean my hand and my deflated organ, I saw the door of my room ajar, which was unusual, since I never changed into my night attire without closing it.  
The room reeked of sex and of my wasted fluids , but there was something else in the air, something foreign and familiar at the same time. Feeling like a hound pointing at its prey, I sniffed over and over until I was sure I recognized the scents: tobacco and chemicals.  
Holmes had been in my room, I deduced. He had stayed long enough to leave such a trail and had left without closing the door behind him, as if he was in a hurry.  
I’m not the master detective he is and, as he never failed to remind me, my power of deduction are close to nil, but in that moment I didn’t have any doubts that he was there, looking at me while I was pleasuring myself.

So that was it, I thought. The game had just moved a step further and it seemed that both Holmes and I were getting ready to play it.

I couldn’t help but smile when I thought about the situation. My mind conjured an image of Holmes looking like a gazelle ready to sprint and I like a lion who had to act swiftly in order to catch its prey. I was hungry, starving, in fact, and had no intention of loosing my meal. Just thinking about it made my just satisfied and spent virility try to raise again.  
Now that my mind had, I admit following a crazy line of thoughts, coped with the fact that I could be with Holmes without hurting the memory of my Mary, and I was sure, deep in my heart, that he was interested too, all I could think about was how to win his favours.

I could imagine him afraid, nervous, and without the slightest idea about how to act in a situation totally alien to him. Holmes being Holmes, if he did know what to do he would have done it already. That was his nature after all.   
Being the one more experienced in the matters of sex, I was the one who had to act. But how?  
Holmes was no blushing debutante. Flowers, candies and romantic verses whispered under a pale moonlight were not going to succeed with him. I tried to imagine the scene and all I managed to see was Holmes laughing sardonically at me or throwing me out of our lodgings or both.  
How do you seduce a man like Sherlock Holmes?   
I needed to think about it some more, perhaps trying to apply Holmes’ methods to the matter.

When I descended to our living room some time later, Holmes was nowhere to be seen, so I had my breakfast alone and then went out.  
How do you seduce a man like Sherlock Holmes, I asked myself again, while strolling without a destination along the streets of a very hot and humid London.


	5. Chapter 5

HOLMES

That evening I was sitting in my chair, smoking and trying to put some order into my thoughts when Watson came back home.

I tried to pretend that he was not affecting me so strongly, but just his presence in the room made my heart pounding faster and my prick stir inside my trousers.  
"Good evening, Holmes" he said with his usual, good natured tone.  
I answered him a weak good evening, avoiding to look directly at him. I wondered if I was also blushing.  
This sudden shyness was maddening, but I seemed unable to overcome it and there was a part of my mind that was studying all these unexpected reactions and find them fascinating.

I watched him pour a couple of glasses of brandy and then walk toward me, offering me one.  
He sat on his chair, crossed his legs like usual and sipped his brandy. He looked tense, and preoccupied.

"Holmes…” he said at last, braking the unreal silence. “ I don't know how to start this conversation, but there's no use in pretending that nothing is happening.”  
My face was burning now because I was sure he was going to tell me he had caught me in his room. I never thought Watson would be so brave to face the argument with me so freely. His boldness was astonishing and I admired him for it.

“what do you mean, my friend?” I asked lamely, trying to delay the confrontation.

“there’s something happening in my mind, lately. It’s totally new for me. And unexpected. And in some ways it scares me because I really don’t know where it comes from and why now

between us, right now. I may be wrong, of course and if I am, you probably will laugh at me for what I’m going to say now… But I’m pretty sure you were in my room this morning…”

"I think you were looking for something, and if you’re still interested in finding it, we may search whatever it is together… If you want, of course.”  
Good old Watson. Always delicate and sensible, even when he was telling me that he knew my secrets and what was going on in my mind. He was giving me the opportunity to stop our game or to move to the next level keeping the embarrassment as low as possible.   
It would have been so easy to pretend I didn’t know what he was talking about, laugh at his assumptions, mock his deductive powers and from there go on as if nothing has ever happened. Just a believable laugh and the madness of the last days would come to and end.   
"Holmes?"   
I still didn't look at him and stayed mute.   
"Holmes, would you like to come upstairs with me and talk about it some more?”  
He pointed his finger in the general direction of his bedroom, making it clear that he did know what he was doing.   
"Look, Holmes, nothing has to happen, I promise you. You don't need to be afraid. I just want to show you something".   
I could smell a faint odour of cologne, which helped to make up my mind.  
I looked at him. I could see it was as nervous as I was, but he was mastering it for the sake of us both. He knew the risks he was taking but was willing to do it in the name of the truth… And he was committing himself to a felony for a greater cause. Knowing that I was totally out of my depths in this field, he was taking control of the situation. Just like Sherlock Holmes would have everywhere else. And if he was Sherlock Holmes in this game, all I could do was to be his Watson and follow him wherever this adventure was heading.

He smiled reassuringly. I nodded, smiling too, de facto accepting his offer.   
He stood up and headed toward his room. I followed him, telling me that I was crazy, but going ahead anyway. I knew that we were courting any kind of trouble, but there was nothing I could do to avoid it and even less that I really wanted to do anyway.


End file.
